A lack of confidence
This policy briefing focuses on the key themes and trends emerging from the Land Market Insights Report 2026, as well as findings from previous years, highlighting what the policy implications could be.
Confidence is key to a well-functioning market, for both buyers and sellers. The evidence for 2025 indicates a significant reduction in confidence across the board, with notably lower supply and demand in the rural land market.
For the past few years, the Scottish rural land market has been navigating an uncertain and changeable economic landscape where the cumulative impacts of recent high interest rates and persistent inflation have eroded buyer confidence, while motivating potential sellers to sit tight. This year, land agents also report significant “land management inflation” for labour and materials making costs prohibitive, especially in the context of woodland planting.
Commodity prices vary widely, move in different directions, and continue to have a significant impact on confidence. While, for example, forestry activity remains stifled by a combination of factors including low timber values, on the other hand, livestock farmers received their highest prices in years. However, for livestock farmers this price boost does not seem to have translated into greater land acquisitions – unlike the uptick in acquisitions for dairy farming following high milk prices in previous years – and is perhaps another indication that even where business is doing better, confidence remains low.
While such macro-economic factors are hard to predict, let alone control, the significant impact on sales volume, and on buyer and seller confidence, shows just how exposed the largely unregulated Scottish rural land market is to global forces, and how such forces affect behaviour.
